The FSB lieutenant colonel sentenced to 10 years for espionage

On December 14, 2004 the Moscow district military court sentenced the FSB lieutenant colonel Igor Vyalkov to 10 years in prison. Vyalkov was arrested in 2002 on charges of selling secret information to an Estonian intelligence agent.

The FSB found that he had contacted an Estonian intelligence agent, identified as KAPO (Estonian security police) officer Zoya Kint, and passed information to her on three Russian intelligence officers. The military court began hearing the case on July 5 2002 but immediately adjourned until July 21 because Vyalkov said he did not trust his lawyers: Omar Akhmedov and Elena Lebedeva-Romanova. But the judge, Yevgeny Zubov, refused to replace the lawyers, instead adding a third lawyer, who happened to work at the same law firm as Lebedeva-Romanova.

Judge Zubov was to become famous in 2008 for his verdict in the jury trial of three suspects in the case of the October 2006 assassination of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Then he ordered the closure of the trial because, he said, the jury refused to enter the courtroom before the reporters. The next day one of the jurors challenged the judge’s decision, claiming none of the jurors had demanded that the press be excluded, despite all the court officials’ efforts to persuade them otherwise. But in the Vyalkov case it seemed that not only had the judge been chosen specially, but the lawyers as well.

Omar Akhmedov, dismissed in vain by Vyalkov, was by not new to spy trials. In 2002 the Moscow district military court tried Alexander Sypachev, an SVR colonel accused of spying for the CIA. Akhmedov was his state-appointed lawyer. Perhaps the reason why Sypachev didn’t attempt to get rid of his lawyer was that Sypachev finally admitted his guilt.

“My defendant and I have different views on defense tactics”, was the sincere explanation Akhmedov gave Moscow News for his differences with Vyalkov.

Agentura.Ru, January 23, 2011